A full list of all the new/popular databases and their uses?

Question

Recently I have found that there are many new databases popping up all around my radar, and I would like to make a list of what they do and perhaps what their advantages/disadvantages are. I'll seed the list with some names and perhaps someone with more knowledge can chip in with some information about each and how they stack up. I hope this will fast become a comprehensive list of all the available database so that developers can leverage the right one for the job at hand!

Relational Databases:

Established:

• DB2
• MySQL
• Oracle
• PostgreSQL
• SQLite
• SQL Server
• Sybase
• OpenEdge SQL

New:

• RethinkDB

Key-value stores:

• Berkeley DB
• memcached
• redis

Document oriented Stores:

• couchDB
• mongoDB
• List item

Graph DataBases:

• Neo4j
• AWS Neptune
• Sesame
• AllegroGraph
• different RDF/triplestores

Answer 1

The SQLite database engine

• self-contained
• serverless
• zero-configuration
• transactional
• cross platform Unix (Linux and Mac OS X), OS/2, and Windows (Win32 and WinCE) are supported out of the box. Easy to port to other systems.
• faster than heck

With library for most popular languages

• .Net
• perl
• Feel free to edit this and add more links

Answer 2

To file under both 'established' and 'key-value store': Berkeley DB.

Has transactions and replication. Usually linked as a lib (no standalone server, although you may write one). Values and keys are just binary strings, you can provide a custom sorting function for them (where applicable).

Does not prevent from shooting yourself in the foot. Switch off locking/transaction support, access the db from two threads at once, end up with a corrupt file.

Answer 3

Martin Fowler did an interesting blog post last year about non-relational databases starting to gain traction. He mentions:

• Drizzle (a "bare bones" relational database)
• CouchDB (a document-oriented database)
• GemStone (an object-oriented database)

There is also Google's BigTable which is described as "a sparse, distributed multi-dimensional sorted map".

I have been working with GemStone for a number of years now and the productivity gains is amazing - having the database store your objects directly removes the need to constantly marshall back and forth between tables and objects.

Answer 4

There are graph databases like:

• Neo4j
• Sesame
• AllegroGraph
• different RDF/triplestores

A graph database stores data as nodes and relationships/edges.This is a good fit for semi-structured data, interconnected information and domains with deep relationships/traversal, for example social networks and knowledge representation. The data model is highly flexible and "whiteboard friendly". The underlying data model of the semantic web, RDF, is also a (labeled, directed multi-)graph.

Other stackoverflow threads with information on graph databases:

• The Next-gen Databases
• Non-Relational Database Design (listing some +/-)
• Have anyone used Graph based databases

Answer 5

What about CassandraDB, Project Voldemort, TokyoCabinet?

Answer 6

I doubt I'd use it in a mission-critical system, but Derby has always been very interesting to me.